1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a job processing method, recording medium, program, and system, suitable for a system including an information processing device such as a computer capable of transmitting job data that can be processed by an information processing device such as a printing device, for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, various types of data (also referred to as job data, or simply jobs) have been output at printing devices such as copiers, printers, and the like, in various environments such as offices, public offices, banks, hospitals, schools, and the like.
For example, with a conventional office environment, there are cases in which a user transmits a job to a printer (or multifunction peripheral (MFP)) so as to print a document created by a personal computer (PC) serving as an example of an information processing device, from the printer. However, the job is not printed or output is not started at once.
Such a state is often caused when the printer side is preparing, sleeping, printing, in an error state, or the like. Additionally, such a state can be caused because another job is being printed with the printer, or multiple print jobs are queued.
In such a case, since current printing devices are high-capability devices including a memory, such as a hard disk or the like therein, an arrangement has been proposed in which jobs transmitted from the PC are saved in memory during such a state so as to resume printing when such a state is resolved.
An alternative arrangement has been proposed wherein in the event that a host computer transmits a job to a printer, a user can confirm the state of the printer on a screen such as a printer driver of the computer. Depending on the level of experience of the user using a PC, such as a user accustomed to the operations, a user quite familiar with electronic apparatuses, and the like, it is likely that the user can instruct the printer to perform printing processing after confirming the state of the printer displayed on the aforementioned printer driver screen, in such a case in which the user transmits a print job from the PC to a printer so as to control the printer to print the print job by making full use of operating techniques.
A printing control device has been proposed (in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-179704) in which the printing data transmitted from an information processing device such as a workstation, personal computer, or the like, and printed by a printing device, is stored in a printing control device capable of accepting the printing data from the information processing device. In the event of printing the stored printing data again, determination is made whether or not printing can be performed with the configuration of printing at that time. In the event that printing cannot be performed, the printing attributes or configuration can be modified so as to perform printing.
Thus, various types of situations can occur under various types of use environments. For example, there may be a situation in which a user wants to rapidly print out a document created with an information processing device such as a PC on a printer, and obtain the printed document within a short period of time, such as a time period from arriving at the office until before the start of a morning conference.
With such a situation, it can be assumed that shortly after inputting a printing start instruction of the document to be immediately required, the user hurries to the printer side so as to obtain the document that should have been printed out. However, on the printer side, a situation can occur in which printout has not been completed (including cases in which printing operation itself has not been started) due to causes such as those mentioned above.
In such a situation (the document required immediately has not been printed out on the printer side, contrary to the expectations of the user that the document should have been printed out on the printer side), the following actions may be assumed to be taken by the user.
For example, in the event that there are multiple printers in an office, and another printer is available, the user rapidly returns to his/her own seat in front of his/her own computer, gives up on printout with the aforementioned printer, and reissues a printout instruction of the document so as to perform printout with another available printer.
Also, for example, in the event that another available printer itself does not exist in an office, or in the event that there is no more time to wait until the document is printed out on the printer because of the schedule of user, the user operates the operating unit of the printer to which the job is transmitted so as to quit the job in order to quit printout itself of the data transmitted from the PC to the printer.
Thus, in a situation in which the job transmitted from the PC cannot be immediately printed out at the printer, the user may be forced to take some action.
Here, it should be noted that a conceivable user reaction to such a scenario would be that if printout cannot be performed at the printer immediately, the user needs to know this prior to transmitting a job from the PC. This can be considered to be a substantial user demand.
Also, as described above, even if the user wants to cancel the job in the event that printout cannot be performed immediately, the job once input (the job regarding which a printout start instruction has been input at the PC by the user via a user interface such as a printer driver or the like) cannot be cancelled from the client side in the event that the job has been transmitted to the printer side, and the transition is changed to a printout-waiting state, though canceling during spooling may be possible. Also, even if canceling cannot be instructed from the operating unit on the PC side, the user can cancel the job by proceeding to the printer side as described above, and inputting a cancel instruction from the operating unit of the printer, but the job has been stored in external memory (memory included in the printing device itself or memory included in a server device) different from his/her own PC until the cancel instruction is input.
Thus, even if the user wants to cancel the printout, it makes no difference that the job goes to a remote location from the client side even though temporarily (the job data from the client computer is saved in the memory of another external device different from the client computer such as a server device, printer, or the like capable of receiving the job data from the client computer).
Consequently, a reasonable user demand would be that if printout cannot be performed immediately according to the content and type of data, printout itself should be prevented beforehand as a matter of course, and further, if possible, the job should be prevented from being stored in the external memory (memory of a device other than his/her own information processing device such as memory included in the printing device itself or memory included in a server device or the like) and from being transmitted from the PC, for the sake of a printer which cannot print the job immediately.
Particularly, in the event that the type of data is data including private information such as personal identity documents, documents relating to insurance, and the like, or data having a high level of secrecy and importance such as data of conference documents and specifications, a user would want to hide such information from outsiders. Accordingly, in the event of such data, a user would want to prevent the aforementioned situations from occurring as much as possible, from the perspective of preventing leaking of information.
Further, it should be noted that even if a device (printing device or server, in this example) has high-security functions making information leaks impossible, storing data in external memory (printing device or server, in this example) is still going to be performed, and the arrangement is no different from that above as far as this issue is concerned. Accordingly, if a user should feel that the data is not secure and that information may leak, using a device (printing device or server, in this example) having high-security functions cannot completely eliminate such fears.